


He Who Shall Hurt

by YdrittE



Series: Zeitgeister [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: And Also A Shitty Adulthood, Bad Parenting, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ghosts, Sephiroth Had A Shitty Childhood, Supernatural Elements, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24623104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YdrittE/pseuds/YdrittE
Summary: It takes him a moment to understand what he’s looking at – years have passed since Sephiroth told him about the Drowning Man, and that was the last Hojo heard of it. Nobody was stupid enough to tell him about any subsequent ghosts Sephiroth may or may not have seen.It seems that in the years since that first haunting, Sephiroth has gotten a better look at it.
Series: Zeitgeister [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780246
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	He Who Shall Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my bullshit again, I guess ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> All the FFVIIR & Haunting of Hill House spoilers from last time still apply

Sephiroth learns quite fast that asking Hojo for help when something is bothering him is not a very good idea. It will earn him dismissal at best and scorn at worst. Hojo is careful to encourage this particular learning experience.

A lab assistant approaches him, tells him Sephiroth had had a nightmare and had seemed quite upset and if they may give him sleeping pills with his dinner. Hojo doesn’t need to concern himself with the matter; they just need permission on the medication (because permission from Hojo is needed for everything to do with Sephiroth, Hojo has made sure of that).

“He can handle a few nightmares,” Hojo tells her, and turns away to signal the conversation is over.

The lab assistant stays right where she is. “Sephiroth doesn’t think it was a nightmare,” she says. “Sephiroth thinks it was a ghost. Sephiroth has been touching the floor where the ghost stood about a hundred times by now. We’re worried it might negatively influence his performance.”

She’s smart, this one. She knows the buzzwords that get Hojo’s attention.

“I’ll talk to him,” Hojo concedes, then adds: “No medication unless I say so. It might negatively influence his performance, after all.”

His interests and those of his employees aren’t necessarily at odds with each other. It isn’t necessarily a battle of wits. But it can be, just a little bit sometimes.

-

Sephiroth is running his hand over the concrete floor when Hojo enters the room. He doesn’t even look up. “Good morning, Professor.”

“The lab assistants tell me you saw a ghost last night.”

“I told them not to tell you.” He sounds annoyed.

Hojo shrugs, even though Sephiroth isn’t looking. “They need my permission to give you sleeping pills. Do you _need_ sleeping pills?”

A moment of silence. Sephiroth is frowning at the floor.

“I asked you a question.” Hojo’s tone is warning, ever so slightly. He has no patience for this sort of childish behaviour. He knows that Sephiroth knows this.

“There was a ghost right here,” Sephiroth tells him, still not looking up. “It was drowning, and when I screamed, it screamed too. So loud it made my ears hurt.” His fingers are drawing patterns on the concrete floor, circles and swirls and spirals.

Hojo takes a step closer, and crouches down to join his son on the floor. They’re almost eye to eye now. “What did the ghost look like?” he asks, careful to keep his voice even. A nagging suspicion in the back of his mind mutters about the Ancients and how they spoke to the planet. Spiritual people. Did Sephiroth inherit their talents?

Sephiroth shrugs. “I couldn’t see properly; it was too dark in the room. It was tall, and it had long hair. But the scream sounded like a man.”

“Do you need sleeping pills?”

“Will the Drowning Man come back?”

Hojo shrugs, and Sephiroth looks up from the floor. He’s only five years old. His stare is stubborn, uncompromising. “If it comes back, I’ll make sure the assistants don’t bother you again because of it.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Hojo gets up, brushes imaginary dust off his lab coat. He leaves Sephiroth to his floor patterns. He doesn’t sanction the use of sleeping pills, and his employees don’t broach the subject again. Not quite a battle of wits. Not quite.

-

Nobody wanted him to find the drawing. Nobody expected him to. Hojo didn’t expect to find it, either. He isn’t usually in the habit of rifling through Sephiroth’s belongings. But his son is away, fighting in another war, and Hojo allows himself to give in to the sentimental urge to step into his room and look around at the childhood his child had left behind. He runs his hands over the edge of the desk, almost turns away. Then stops.

From under the strategy notes on Sephiroth’s desk, the edge of another piece of paper is peeking out.

From underneath the neatly written pages, Hojo pulls a little piece of art.

It takes him a moment to understand what he’s looking at – years have passed since Sephiroth told him about the Drowning Man, and that was the last Hojo heard of it. Nobody was stupid enough to tell him about any subsequent ghosts Sephiroth may or may not have seen.

It seems that in the years since that first haunting, Sephiroth has gotten a better look at it.

Bloodshot, tired eyes stare up at him from the paper. The face is covered in blood, as are the bangs framing it, and the cascade of hair at the back of its head (fair-haired, but the similarity to _her_ is undeniable). Its clothing is torn to reveal an awful, gaping wound across its chest and belly, run through by a sword or the like. Its mouth is opened in what must be a scream.

Hojo can’t seem to tear his eyes away from it.

_When I screamed, it screamed too_ , he hears Sephiroth say, way back in this very room. It makes an awful sort of sense now.

He puts the drawing back, careful to leave the desk exactly as he found it. When he turns around to leave, Sephiroth is standing in the doorway.

His eyes are fixed on the drawing, back on the desk underneath the other pieces of paper. He speaks without looking at Hojo. “I should have burned it before leaving,” he says, sounding almost sad. “I shouldn’t have drawn it in the first place.”

Hojo doesn’t answer.

Sephiroth lets out a dry chuckle. “I saw it in Wutai. Startled me so badly it almost got me killed. Can you believe that?”

“I can.”

Wutai wasn’t that long ago. The first haunting wasn’t that long ago, either. Sephiroth has grown up quite fast.

They stand in silence for a few more moments. Hojo decides it might be best to end this conversation before it goes somewhere they can’t come back from. He steps away from the desk, and towards the door. Next to Sephiroth he stops.

“Do you need sleeping pills?” he asks, and this time he means it.

But Sephiroth just laughs. “I wasn’t sleeping the last time I saw it. I don’t think I was sleeping _any_ of the times it showed up.”

-

Nibelheim is a disaster. It’s still partially on fire when he gets there, crawling with Turks and soldiers. People throw worried glances in his direction. Nobody approaches him.

Tseng is waiting in front of the mansion to lead him to the reactor, briefs him on the situation as they make their way up the narrow mountain path. Two survivors, one of them a Soldier. Sephiroth gone. Jenova’s tank smashed open, the creature itself missing its head. Signs of a struggle, signs of a battle. Signs of a death.

The descriptions pale in comparison to the real thing when Hojo sets foot in the reactor (or rather, what’s left of it). He has to stop, take a deep breath. The air tastes of ashes and Mako.

The two survivors – Soldier 1st Class Zack Fair and a currently unidentified trooper – are laid out on stretchers, unconscious. Fair’s buster sword is lying next to them, people awkwardly stepping around it. The blade is covered in blood. Hojo thinks he knows whose blood that is.

He steps away, up the stairs into the heart of the reactor where Jenova is waiting. The walls, the floor, the pedestal in front of her tank, all slippery with half-dried blood. Pools of it, dripping down into the Mako below. And in the middle of it all, Jenova herself, headless and motionless, and quite clearly still alive. Hojo stares at her and can’t help but wonder if this is what she intended. If this chaos is her design.

It probably is.

-

He returns to Nibelheim not long before dawn. By that time, the last of the fires have been put out, and the town is utterly silent except for his own footsteps and thunder rumbling in the distance. A storm is fast approaching, to bring rain and wash away the evidence of what happened here.

When he enters the mansion, the creaking of the floorboards and the door falling shut behind him are obscenely loud to his ears. He stands in the empty entrance hall, raises his gaze to the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms and the secret passage and the library down below.

At the top of the stairs, framed by the giant stained-glass windows behind him, stands Sephiroth.

He looks just like in the drawing from so long ago. The hair clotted with red, the blood smearing at the corner of his mouth and running from his eyes and nose, the tattered remains of his coat framing the terrible, terrible wound. The buster sword, covered in blood. Puddles of it dripping into the Mako. Of course, what else?

He’s drenched in Mako. It runs together with all the blood and drips onto the floor. Hojo almost wants to run his fingers through it to make patterns. Circles and swirls and spirals. Almost.

But unlike in the drawing, Sephiroth isn’t screaming. His eyes aren’t tired. He looks wide awake, and he’s smiling. He raises his hand, to reach out, to invite.

Hojo is moving without even realising, is at the top of the stairs in what feels like a blink, or maybe a lifetime. The hairs on the back of his neck raise in alarm. But Sephiroth is still smiling.

He lowers his hand and opens his mouth to speak.

Water comes out.

And suddenly he _isn’t_ smiling anymore, lurches forward as his chest contracts and he retches up Mako and blood, steadies himself on the banister and coughs and coughs and coughs. He draws in a breath, or at least tries to, and immediately has to stop to throw up more liquid.

Hojo steps forward, of his own volition this time, not even sure what he intends to do except maybe hold his son steady, try to help him breathe.

He doesn’t get to do any of it. Sephiroth pushes himself upright, stumbles back, still choking, Mako and blood still forcing their way up his windpipe from the seemingly endless well inside his lungs. Thunder rumbles and lightning strikes, and Sephiroth makes a sound that sounds awfully like a sob.

And then he’s gone.

Hojo stands at the top of the stairs, alone in the darkness as the rain beats against the windows and the roof. He stares at the spot where Sephiroth stood, at the invisible patterns of red and green. Distantly he wonders if the lab people kept the old drawing, whether it still exists somewhere in one of the thousands of drawers and stacks of paper.

He wonders if they, too, see or have seen or will see their former charge as he is now, and if they’ll make the connection between the drowning man and Sephiroth’s childhood terror.

He hopes they don’t. And knows that they probably will.


End file.
